by J K Ellem
She let out a slow breath. “Who the hell are you?” she muttered as she looked at the blurry image of the man.
“Looks like a ghost to me,” the waitress said as she leaned in and topped off Beth’s coffee.
“Thanks Sal,” Beth said looking up. Sally Monk took a moment out of her hectic morning, parked the coffee flask on the table, and leaned against the side of the booth. She was in her early fifties and had been waitressing at the truck stop diner since time began. Every morning Beth came into the truck stop diner with the breakfast crowd of truck drivers, early morning workers, and insomniacs. Beth usually ordered coffee and Huevos Rancheros or the diner’s famous breakfast burrito. Either had enough calories to power her through the day, and she usually didn’t eat again until dinner time when she came off her shift. But this morning all she wanted was a sugar hit, so she ordered one of the massive cinnamon rolls that were made at the diner.
"Freddy came home last night all excited about this guy who had walked into the gas station last night and beat up someone," Sal said. "But he was too tired to say any more. Just went to bed."
Beth handed Sally the photo. “Ring any bells?”
Sally slid her glasses off the top of her head and peered at the grainy photo. “I can’t tell. But he looks nothing special. Who is he?” she asked, her brow furrowed as she scrutinized the image.
“No idea yet. Hitched a ride on a long-haul, came out of nowhere.” Out of all the resources Beth had at her disposal as a police officer, the time she spent in the truck stop diner talking to Sally each morning, as well as the locals and truck drivers who passed through, turned up more valuable information than anything else. The truck stop was massive compared to the small gas station where Freddy Monk worked. There was a better chance of someone here recognizing the man in the photo.
“So what did he do?” Sally asked, handing back the picture. “Freddy can tend to exaggerate a bit, not sure if he was telling it like it was."
"No exaggeration. This guy walked in and attacked another man."
"So he’s broken the law and you want to catch him.”
“That’s the odd thing,” Beth replied, taking back the photo. “There was a couple, a man and a woman, in the store paying for gas. Freddy said they didn’t look like a couple. The man had a hold of the woman all the time, like she was a hostage or something. Wouldn’t let her stray too far.”
“And?” Sally said expectantly.
“The hitchhiker intervened. Neutralized the man who may have been armed.”
“Really?” Sally asked in disbelief. “And you want to arrest him?”
“He left the gas station with the woman and man. Hauled the man back into their car then drove off.”
Sally shook her head, “Honey, when you find your mystery man or ghost or whoever he is, you should give him a medal.”
Beth smiled. “Do me a favor, Sal.”
“Anything for you, babe.”
“Just keep an eye out and let me know if you see him around.” Beth held out the photo. “Keep it. Dark hair, black leather jacket, dark jeans.”
Sally took the photo and slipped it into the front pocket of her apron. “Sure, but I can’t promise anything. As you know get a few hundred people passing through here each day Beth.” It was true. The truck stop was the largest rest-over complex until you reached Vegas, and Sally Monk was just one of up to twelve waitresses that could be on a shift. At times when it was really busy, Sally simply didn’t have time to check out the face of each person who walked in.
“Any help you can Sal,” Beth said.
“Sure, I’ll do what I can.” She picked up her coffee flask again. “And if I see him, I’ll call you.” Sally turned and sauntered off to pour coffee for two people in a nearby booth.
Beth watched her go then turned and looked out the window. The landscape was wide and flat, with rocky pinnacles in the distance bathed in sunshine, an infinite expanse of yellows, deep orange and ochre, crowned with an endless lavender sky that stretched to the heavens. She loved the vastness of the place, the emptiness, the raw untamed vista. You could drive for miles and not see another person or car, yet not feel lonely. Natural beauty was your constant companion. But somewhere out there amongst the endless horizon and wide limitless plains and distant mountains was a man she had to find.
17
Using his knee, Shaw pushed the door open and stepped into the room. He kicked the door closed behind him without turning around. Three big men stood in the room. They all turned in unison and looked at Shaw.
Bikers.
Shaw guessed they were from Room 2 at the front and owned the three Harley’s parked in the slot outside. It was too late to worry about how they got into the room; he had to deal with the fact they were there and what he was going to do about it.
Shaw held the big take-out bag in front of his chest and sized them up. Mean faces, scarred, creased, and weathered from years of hard riding in the wind, sun, and rain. The constant buffeting by road dirt, exhaust fumes, and highway grime had aged the men, making their faces rough and textured like the worn leather jackets they had on. Chains dangled from heavy jeans. They had long hair, beards, thick necks, and bulging arms covered in tattoos. Shaw just had one tattoo; he guessed between the three bikers he was looking at about fifty colorful ones, some new, most faded. Big meaty hands were hard-knuckled with plenty of scar tissue, the kind of fist damage that gets laid down from years of hitting plenty of faces and punching motel drywall. They each wore heavy industrial biker boots, steel-capped with shin and knee busters.
The bikers studied Shaw before dismissing him as a puny pushover, a distraction, an entrée before the main course. The main course was the black bitch. They were going to gang her, pound her little black pussy until she bled. Then they would shift their attention to her other parts.
It was three against one. Like so many times before, it was the odds they always played.
The woman didn’t stand a chance.
They had waited until they saw the man leave twenty minutes ago, watching him through the curtains. Figured he was going across the highway to get coffee or food. Then they descended on the room at the end where one of them had seen the black bitch last night arrive with the man.
They knew she would be a tasty find if they could get her alone. They couldn’t believe she opened the door, fell for the oldest trick in the book. They had pulled the same “house-keeping” stunt back in Iowa. Left some traveling saleswoman beaten and sodomized in a similar motel room.
Shaw could see Jessie was balled up in the corner behind one of the beds. She had backed up until she had nowhere else to go. She looked scared, fearful for her life.
Shaw turned back to the three bikers. They were staggered in a triangle: the biggest at the front and the other two behind on each side, the wingmen. The big biker at the front and closest to Shaw grinned, his face twisted and cruel, his voice like gravel. “And here I was thinking the woman was going to be breakfast.”
Shaw stood his ground, holding the take-out bag, judging angles and distance, scrolling through options in his head. Just seven feet of threadbare brown carpet between him and three pairs of cannonball-sized fists and Frankenstein-sized boots. Not to mention the possibility of weapons these guys usually carried. Brass knuckles, switch blades, expandable batons.
The room was tight. Okay for two normal-sized adults, but congested with three steroid-induced giants added to the mix.
The big biker cocked his head at Shaw. “I’ll give you fifty bucks for the woman.”
Shaw was hungry, the smell of hot food from the take-out bag filled the room. “She’s worth at least sixty,” Shaw replied. “I’d ask for more but I had her last night. She’s nothing special. The extra ten bucks is because she’s black.”
One of the wingmen laughed and looked at Jessie, as though she was being horse-traded, passed around like a bottle of beer. Take a swig and pass her to the next person. He licked his lips, his eyes lingering over h
er breasts and crotch.
The big biker laughed too, then his face hardened at Shaw. “Who’s the guy in the bathroom? You got something weird going on here?”
Shaw took a deep breath and shook his head like he was embarrassed. “Just some freaky shit we did last night. You know bondage and beating.” Shaw nodded at Jessie. “It was her idea. It’s her brother. They do some kind of brother and sister act, if you’re into that kind of thing. After they’re done she likes to beat up on him.”
For a moment the big biker believed Shaw. Then his eyes narrowed. He knew when he was being played. And this little shit was playing him for a fool. He spoke to the wingman on his right without turning, his eyes still fixed on Shaw. “Cueball, turn up the TV. We’re going to waste this fucker. Don’t want the old bitch in the front office calling the cops, yet.”
Cueball took two steps sideways and turned up the dial on the old TV. Pleasant music with a woman’s voice-over filled the room. A cheesy advertisement for Viagra was playing on the screen. A good-looking middle-aged woman was on her knees in a perfectly manicured garden, a set of pruners in her hand, wondering why her husband wasn’t as hard as the stalk of bamboo she was trying to cut through. He had been when they first met back in college all those years ago, but now he was as limp and as weepy as her jasmine vine.
Cueball grinned at Shaw, showing a row of yellow crooked teeth. He was called Cueball because he’d smashed in a woman’s face with a cueball in a bar in Cincinnati a few years back. Knocked all her front teeth out when she spilled beer on the pool table during a game he was winning.
The big biker pulled a knife from the small of his back and held it in front of him, admiring the thick gleaming blade. It was more like a machete than a knife, and for an instant Shaw was reminded of an Australian movie he had once seen about a crocodile hunter with a big knife who was about to be mugged by three men in an alley.
Shaw was thankful the big biker had pulled out the knife. The bigger the better. Now he had justification.
The big biker glared at Shaw over the razor edge of the blade. “How about we just take the bitch for free and put you in the hospital for a month?”
There were twelve walls of eight-inch thick cinder block between them and the front office. Shaw doubted anyone would hear what was about to happen.
“Time’s up fucker.” The big biker took a step toward Shaw.
The bacon and egg roll in the take-out bag did very little to decelerate the first bullet. But the sternum of the big biker was made from completely different material that stopped the 9mm round after it smashed into his chest, kicking him back half a foot.
During the autopsy they would find traces of BBQ sauce in the man’s entry wound. By the time the forensics team was done with what remained of the small motel room, and lines of trajectory had been calculated, and the burn holes in the take-out bag they found dropped on the carpet near the front door were analyzed, they would piece together what had happened. Some smart crime scene tech would work out that the shooter was standing just inside the room with his back to the door, with the large takeout bag held in front, roughly at chest height. The big paper bag in the left hand was concealing a Glock handgun in the right hand, the muzzle pressed against the paper bag, aimed at the first victim’s chest. The crime scene report would question whether in fact the dead man was a victim after all, given the prints they lifted off the large combat knife they found under his body when he fell to the carpet and died. The District Attorney would have to decide if it was in fact self-defense.
The big biker remained standing, wide-eyed staring at Shaw in disbelief, the big knife still in his hand. He staggered forward like a zombie, his chest seeping blood. He was a big man and one 9mm bullet wasn’t going to do it. The follow-up shot to the head, however, dropped him like the sack of shit he was. Even Rick Grimes would have been impressed.
The motel room exploded into mayhem.
Bodies, arms, furniture, and desperation were thrown together into a swirling, moving orbit of objects, some in straight lines, others in curving arcs with gravity playing a part.
Jessie flung herself to the floor behind the bed. Clever girl, Shaw thought as he swung his arm, tracking the movement of the other two bikers. At least she wouldn’t get shot by accident.
Cueball, for a man who weighed over two hundred pounds of muscle and bone, moved with surprising speed. He grabbed a heavy lamp from the bedside table and hurled it at Shaw’s head.
Shaw dropped the take-out bag and stepped to the right, his eyes focused on the other wingman, the one closest to Jessie who was on the floor curled up behind the bed. That wingman had a knife out, his arm already pulled back primed to throw it at Shaw.
Shaw squeezed off another shot, aiming the gun without bringing it up to his eye, instinct and trigonometry his only hope.
The man’s shoulder and arm powered forward, beginning his knife throwing motion, but then burst backwards as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. He dropped to the floor screaming in pain.
The left side of Shaw’s vision darkened, something huge and hulking blocking out the light in the room, closing in on him out of his periphery. Shaw swung the gun left and downward and shot Cueball in the left leg, collapsing the big man like a charging rhinoceros under a poacher’s gun. He groveled on the ground at Shaw’s feet, his fingers clawing at Shaw’s shins, trying to pull himself up or Shaw down. His face was twisted in a heinous snarl of spittle and sweat. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he screamed.
Shaw shook him off and stepped back. “Not today,” Shaw replied, before delivering a brutal kick to the side of Cueball’s head, knocking him out cold.
Shaw reached the other biker at the back of the room who sat against the wall, clutching his shoulder, blood seeping through his fingers. Shaw looked down at him and pointed the gun at his head. “You move, I’ll shoot you.”
The man looked at the end of the barrel, beads of sweat on his face, and nodded.
“Good.”
Shaw kicked the man’s knife away, preferring not to touch it and contaminate it with his own prints. He kneed the man in the head, knocking him out, too.
Helping Jessie up, he sat her on the bed. “We need to get out of here.” He told her to pack everything and make sure they left nothing behind.
“I’m sorry, I—”
Shaw cut her off. “You can explain later. Just pack. Now!”
The bathroom door was shut, but Shaw could see there was a problem. Blood was spreading from under the door, a slow moving pool of deep crimson. He gently opened the door and pushed it back.
Rasul’s eyes were open, staring vacantly at the tiled floor, a deep gash across his throat.
18
The plan was to leave the motel as fast as they could. Just get out of the place. It was a now a crime scene. Shaw told Jessie that Rasul was dead. She told him the big biker went into the bathroom after he heard muffled screams coming from there. Rasul must have heard new voices outside the room and had mistaken it for someone who could help him.
Shaw was happy to leave that to the police to figure out. So while Jessie packed what little they had into the car, Shaw went in search of the janitorial closet. He found a small storeroom at the rear of the building. Inside was a maid’s cart, brooms, shelving with towels neatly folded, open boxes filled with tiny soaps, and coffee refill items. He took a bottle of Clorox bleach off the shelf and some cleaning rags.
He returned to the motel room and, stepping over the bodies, quickly cleaned every surface that he and Jessie had touched—doorknobs, the coffee machine, TV remote, light switches, the phone. Shaw worked methodically but fast.
The smell of death was heavy in the bathroom, raw and brutal. He didn’t pause to look down at the dead body of Abasi Rasul. Shaw just carefully stepped around the congealing pool of blood on the tile and worked quickly through the tiny room, wiping down all the taps, shower stall, toilet seat and push button, and the basin. There was a discarded hand towel droppe
d on the tile next to the toilet. Shaw left it where it was. The depth and shape of the throat cut would match the knife found under the dead biker at the front door. The hand towel was used to wipe blood off the blade but forensics would find traces of Rasul’s dried blood on the blade as well as on the fingers of the dead biker. They would conclude that either Rasul was working with them or it was a deal gone wrong. Shaw didn’t care who got the blame as long as it wasn’t him or Jessie.
Shaw walked backward through the room to the door, checking one more time he had wiped off every surface before standing at the open doorway surveying the scene before him.
What a mess.
The two other bikers were still unconscious as Shaw closed the door, wiping the knob as he went.
He returned the bleach to the storeroom, careful to wipe the bottle and doorknob with a bleach-soaked hand towel he had taken off the shelf. Before he exited the motel room, he retraced his steps, making sure he had covered everything.
He didn’t want to leave any prints or residue in the room. He was going to lay the blame squarely on the bikers. After all they had killed Rasul, slit his throat while he lay defenseless on the tile floor, tied to the toilet pipe. Maybe Rasul had woken. Maybe he hadn’t; maybe he died in a nightmare that felt like his head was being torn off. Maybe it was justice for what he had done, the role he had played in the death of so many. Instant karma as they say.
Jessie sat timidly in the passenger seat, too embarrassed or in shock to say anything to Shaw as he climbed in next to her. There was nothing to say. She shouldn’t have opened the door or at least should have checked through the curtain to see who it was.
Shaw drove to the front office, pulled up, and left the motor running. He took a moment to carefully wipe both room keys, including the room number tags, with the hand towel. He got out, and holding the keys by the metal rings only, walked into the office and dropped them on the counter. He thanked the old woman and told her he’d left a generous tip in the room for the maid. Given they were newlyweds and all, things got a bit heated. She gave a knowing smile, and for the second time imagined what Shaw looked like naked on top on her. She said she would make sure the maid got the money.